Claiming our rights! Women and Trade Unions

In sisterhood

Discrimination, exploitation, starvation wage, sexual harassment,the catalogue of abuses that still affects many women on the labour market is endless and their fate is still too often surrounded by a wall of silence. But international Women's Day, on March 8, should not only provide an opportunity to condemn unacceptable working conditions, denounce segregation in employment and unequal access to jobs, or reject the ill-effects of unbridled globalisation where women are always among the first to be dismissed, the first to be forced in the "informal sector", or the first to be enlisted to toil in squalid sweatshops.

In many countries, women workers have organised in unions and taken their future in their hands. Their struggle has undoubtedly brought successes. Studies show that women organised in trade unions have obtained better conditions and have been able to take on the most powerful multinationals or force governments to treat them as a force to be reckoned with. . Freedom of association, enshrined in Convention 87 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), has provided women (as other) workers with the best weapon to struggle on. It no coincidence if this year, which marks the 50th anniversary of the ILO instrument, women union leaders grouped in the ICFTU Women's Committee, have joined the campaign to insist on ratification and implementation everywhere of that core standard.

Unions owe a lot to women workers. Their rate of membership has increased from 7 to 35% in the last 50 years, and it is no secret that without their contribution, many national centres would have been in dire straits. They have enabled unions to remain a strong movement representative of the labour force. And while urging governments to honour their commitments, namely those made at Beijing' s World's Women Conference, and campaigning against irresponsible employers, we, the trade unions, should be equally determined to ensure that women have their say in our decision-making.

Their first names are Marcia, Susan, Roliati or Khadija. But whether they hail from America, Africa, Europe or Asia, they have all experienced what it is like to be working women and trade unionists at the same time. Fifty years after the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association and the right to organise, 49 years after its twin sister, Convention 98 on the right to organise and to engage in collective bargaining, more than forty years after Conventions 100 and 111 on equal pay and on discrimination, and three years after the Beijing summit, the demands of working women from both North and South are far from having been satisfied. Whether it is access to jobs, treatment equal to that of men which also respects their physical and moral integrity and their role as mothers, or equal pay for work of equal value, women throughout the world still have a long way to go.

Economic globalization has left its stamp. While it has had an impact on social rights as a whole, globalization has threatened the rights of women workers even more severely. Although women have made progress in the labour market - almost 45% of women aged between 15 and 64 have or are seeking jobs - the quality of jobs which many women hold, particularly in developing countries, is as poor as the attention that is given to their right to organise in order to defend themselves better. In export processing zones (EPZs), in the sweatshops of Asia, in the maquiladoras of Latin America, and even in some of the more vulnerable sectors of Europe or the United States, women are suffering not only inequalities but very often sexual and other types of harassment. The role of workers’ organisations to defend workers' rights is crucial.

A great number of working wives and mothers do not benefit from specific protection measures for pregnant women and nursing mothers at work, although these are measures, which are based on ILO Convention 103 on Maternity Protection, and which exist in most ILO member countries. Maternity-based discrimination remains a reality in most countries, and a growing number of women are being made redundant for being pregnant. Pregnancy tests - and even sterilisation - are increasingly required as a condition for recruitment. Few women workers are granted parental leave or leave for family reasons.

Convention 87 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) is, without a doubt, the basis of all struggles in favour of women workers. Without the right to organise to defend their rights, women would have experienced even greater difficulties in asserting their special needs as workers.

The principle of freedom of association and the right to organise are enshrined in the major United Nations texts, in particular in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which dates back to the same year as Convention 87. The rights stemming from the Convention are also included in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966. Part II of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) makes explicit reference to their participation "in non-governmental organisations and in associations concerned with the public and political life of their countries".

Along the same lines, the 'Beijing platform' (the final text of the UN Women’s Summit of 1995), clearly mentions safeguarding and respecting the basic rights of women workers, including banning forced labour, allowing freedom of association and the right to organise and engage in collective bargaining. This text expressly refers to the ILO conventions, in particular to Convention 87.

Although it is enforceable in countries which have signed and ratified it, the Convention has not always been transposed, into national legislation. While a number of countries - and not the least important ones - have not yet ratified the Convention, there are others which, despite having ratified it, fail to implement it. For instance Benin which, in spite of the obligation it took on by ratifying Convention 87, did not hesitate to crack down on trade unionists in 1994 to avert a wage rise deemed to have potentially inflationary effects. In addition, on several occasions Benin has been taken to task by the ILO for its continuing discrimination against women workers.

Women at work

Women have gained some victories in their struggles for equal opportunities with their male colleagues because they have been organising themselves to fight for their rights. .

This was vividly described at the recent congress called by the General Workers’ Federation of Belgium (Fédération Générale des Travailleurs de Belgique (FGTB) to celebrate their hundredth anniversary). One mild-looking lady took the floor to recount the struggle which she had led in 1966, with nearly four thousand fellow women workers at Belgium’s National Weapons Factory, (Fabrique Nationale d’Armes) in Herstal, near Liège. "We were the machine women. The men were the production workers, or lathe operators, or fitters, or even unskilled labourers! Only a matter of title, you might say!". Even though the work was identical, their wages were not. And one day the women went on strike and won. "The strike", said Charlotte Hauglustaine, "not only brought benefits within the factory, more importantly it served as a tremendous springboard for equal rights in the workplace. This strike served as a model and helped enormously to speed up the struggle for women’s emancipation" .

The percentage of working women is steadily increasing. OECD figures show that the economically active female population grew by an average of 2.1% a year between 1983 and 1992, i.e. more than double the growth rate for working men .

For a long time women’s work has been downgraded, compared to that of men. Although there are more and more women in the labour market, women worldwide are not treated as equal to men when it comes to gaining access to education or to employment, for example, and there are also wage differentials with men who perform work of equal value.

According to the figures of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) , the working female population as a percentage of the working population aged over fifteen as a whole rose from 38% in 1970 to 40% in 1990. Although this figure remained stable in developing countries (from 37% to 39% over the same period) in industrialised countries it rose from 40% to 44%. In addition the labour force statistics largely underestimate the economic activities of women, especially in the informal and agricultural sectors.

Even though growing numbers of women are entering the labour market, their employment is concentrated in low-paid, casual tasks and activities which are characterised by miserable working conditions. Although economic globalization has increased job opportunities for women, it has not improved the quality of their jobs and has actually exacerbated inequalities such as low wages and job segregation.

Women appear to have suffered to a greater extent than men from the changes which have taken place in the labour market world-wide. The fate of women workers is linked to that of their male colleagues in a series of basic conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), for example Conventions 87 and 98 on right to organise and to engage in collective bargaining. However, it is without doubt Conventions 100 and 111 on job discrimination and equal pay for work of equal value which more specifically affect women.

A portrait of women workers in the world would be incomplete if it failed to mention how, to a greater extent than men, many women workers combine paid work with family responsibilities, making their days long and exhausting.

Women in trade unions

Perhaps because of the changes confronting them in the labour market, women have turned in great numbers to the trade unions. While the overall figures for trade union affiliation have remained stable or even fallen, new members have been predominantly women. At the ICFTU they now represent almost 35% of members, compared with barely 7% fifty years ago.

The economic changes that have occurred in recent years have had serious repercussions on trade unions. The privatisation of public services, the deregulation of working conditions, flexibility in enterprises, casual and short-term contracts and, finally, high unemployment levels, have meant declining membership of workers’ organisations, especially those of "blue collar" workers. In parallel, women, who have entered the labour market, have become increasingly active in trade union organisations.

Women at work: specific problems

Women, more often than men, are required to do two jobs in a day. At times they are the sole wage-earners. A short time ago, the International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel and Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations (IUF) complained about the treatment by the company Pêche et Froid in the Côte d’Ivoire of 39 of its female employees, most of whom were sole wage-earners in their families. They had been dismissed without explanation and without warning, although some of them had been working for the firm for over twenty years. In addition, they were not offered any indemnity, compensation or alternative work by their employer.

Globalization has also given rise to major shifts in the labour market, both geographical and sectorial. We are all familiar with the sudden relocation of activities by multinational companies under pressure to be ever more competitive, and of the explosion of EPZs and maquiladoras, veritable pools of cheap and easy labour, which can be, and are, exploited at will. Finally, there are the sudden closures of factories and workshops which sometimes leave workers (who, in certain sectors and non-supervisory posts, are often women) without any form of appeal.

In the informal sector...

Large numbers of women, particularly in developing countries, work in the informal sector, known as the "survival sector", and are therefore not included in official statistics. For this reason, figures on the number of women in the labour market might seem very low in some developing countries and as such do not reflect the real labour market situation because of the strong presence of women in the informal sector. However, here too, they are organising themselves.

In the informal sector the task of organising women workers, which falls to the trade unions, is even more onerous, although the ILO recently reported a number of victories in this field. In India, the International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW) has succeeded in organising tribal women in forest areas and setting up literacy programmes, and has assisted them in negotiations to secure better prices for their products. In Latin America, several programmes exist which seek to organise women in the informal sector, and in southern Africa - mainly South Africa and Namibia - women domestic workers are also creating their own organisations to defend their specific rights.

A woman is equal to a man

Convention 111, one of the ILO’s seven basic conventions, concerns discrimination and in employment and occupation. Forty years after the adoption of Convention 111, and despite the fact that it is one of the ILO instruments that has been ratified by the largest number of countries and transposed into national legislation by anti-discrimination clauses, job and wage discrimination remains a reality for most women workers in the world. The battles waged by the trade unions on this front are legion... but are fortunately sometimes crowned with success. For instance, last year in the United States the air transport workers’ trade union, the ATA, finally won its case in its dispute with the company United Airlines about physical requirements for women (size, weight, etc.). In Thailand, cabin staff trade unions managed to get the rules of certain companies obliging women to take retirement earlier than men repealed

In the view of many employers, families and children do not always mix with work. This gives rise to major discrimination. In the worst sub-contracting shops and in the maquiladoras, women are often forced to take contraception, sometimes without their knowledge. In the plantations and workshops of Mexico, and in the border areas separating Mexico from the United States, women are subjected to pregnancy testing before they are recruited. Women who fall pregnant while they are already working suffer such poor treatment that most of them end up leaving.

Export processing zones: hell on earth!

Export processing zones (EPZs) are the scene of some of the most brutal forms of exploitation of male and female workers by companies wishing to remain competitive at any cost. Over recent years such zones have mushroomed. Their power to attract multinationals which are seeking to reduce their tax and wage costs is immense. Mostly it is companies from the northern hemisphere which relocate to developing countries. One of the major advantages of these countries, and the deciding factor for foreign investors, is the low cost of the primarily female labour which EPZ proponents consider to be docile and malleable. The supreme advantage of the operation, again according to its advocates, is the virtual absence of trade unions: depending on the country, this results in various forms of violence towards women workers. These range from simple verbal abuse to dismissal if they attempt to set up a trade union or simply join a trade union, and even to criminal or Mafia-style attacks in places where there are organisations such as death squads.

In Panama, one of the most notorious countries for this phenomenon, nearly 95% of employees in the maquiladoras - which are typically found in EPZs - are female. In the special economic zones located along China’s south-east coast, women - often young - make up the majority of the workforce, between 70 and 80%. It is no accident that, in all of the free zones all round the world, employers very clearly prefer unmarried women.

Similarly, several trade unions sent letters of protest to Michael Eisner, the boss of Walt Disney, about working conditions in the factories which carry out sub-contracting work for the group in Haiti. Back in December 1996, a delegation of Canadian trade unions was already denouncing unfair wages, threats and intimidation targeted at women workers, as well as the punishing pace of work to which they were subjected. "Treated like animals, they are the constant butt of verbal abuse and have to endure continuous and unacceptable humiliations", wrote these trade unionists, who demanded respect for the ILO’s basic conventions.

Women immigrants and employment

Not only are women the so-called easy labour of the EPZs, they also form the majority of the migrant workforce, according to the ILO. Immigrant women, in particular those who work as domestic staff, are poorly paid, exploited and ill-considered, and many are the victims of abuse and rape.

The Sarah Balabagan affair shed light on the distressing problem of immigrant women whose fate was described in an ILO report . It recounts, for example, that in Singapore immigrant women who often come from other Asian countries, are also forced to undergo pregnancy tests every six months. It tells how some recruitment agencies have no scruples about demanding exorbitant commissions, paying themselves out of the women’s first wage packet or even confiscating the passports of women have applied through the agencies. Finally, the ILO denounced the increase in prostitution in this particular group of women workers, since increasing numbers of women are being forced into prostitution.

In this instance, as in many others, international solidarity campaigns have often borne fruit. Solidarity campaigns have been particularly important for supporting women workers who are as poorly protected as immigrant female workers in the domestic sector.

Deteriorating working conditions

Deteriorating working conditions are another of the characteristics of the changing situation of women workers. Added to the punishing pace of work are the effects of handling dangerous products, often without protection, in sectors such as chemicals and electronics. There is a proliferation of serious accidents, sometimes leading to death as the result of poor working conditions or an employer’s lack of interest in the physical complaints of his workers.

As part of a national campaign to ensure a weekly day of rest, the working conditions of textile sector workers in Bangladesh were brought to light. "The workers sometimes have to endure acts of torture and women are the victims of harassment. They enjoy neither housing assistance nor medical or transport infrastructure", explained the general secretary of the National Federation of Textile Workers.

Neither Europe nor the United States are above criticism in this respect. In the United States it is in the agricultural sector where the worst offenders against the most basic workers’ rights are found. One notorious employer, Driscoll Strawberry Associates, a fruit-processing enterprise, refused to provide medical care to a female worker who had been wounded in one of its fields on the Californian coast. When she was finally allowed to see a doctor, it was in the presence of the foreman. Now the 20,000 workers- the great majority of whom are women- are demanding rights as basic as access to sanitary installations and to drinking water in the fields, an end to intimidation and harassment measures, a decent wage and safer working conditions because of the use of pesticides, as well as health insurance from the company. Their demands are actively being supported by the national trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO, as part of its "Strawberry Workers Organising Campaign".

Harassment of unionised workers

The absence of trade unions or difficulties in forming them is obviously a major obstacle to change. ILO Convention 87 is without doubt the reference for women workers wanting to form a union However, even those who actively promote the provisions of Convention 87 do not find that it take women sufficiently into account. Indeed, in cases such as in the EPZs or sub-contracting shops where women have tried to organise themselves, the existence of Convention 87 still fails to give them sufficient support.

Simply being a member of a trade union often serves as grounds for dismissal, or can even lead to acts of repression or violence. Women are prime targets in this respect, particularly in sectors with a predominantly female workforce. Examples abound. Recent years have seen a proliferation of company 'closures' where in fact the company has simply relocated. Known women trade unionists are rarely hired by the new production units. Last year, for instance, the management of the Thai company Piyavat Rubber Industry - a factory which sub-contracts for major sports shoe manufacturers - rejected trade union demands to comply with labour legislation. Production was relocated and known trade unionists were refused jobs when, along with others, they volunteered for re-employment.

In some countries, it is paramilitary groups working in the service of company heads, themselves linked with local mafiosi, which attack trade unions. However, the fate awaiting over-zealous trade unionists is more often than not purely and simply dismissal, or sometimes mass layoffs.

Certain Latin American countries crack down particularly hard on trade unionists whom they consider to be too active, and use very heavy-handed measures.

In some African countries, in both the north and the south, membership of a trade union is also often heavily penalised.

Workers rights are often violated in the countries in the northern hemisphere, but this can sometimes take very subtle forms. Women workers, who are more vulnerable in the labour market, often experience this more strongly. In some European countries, for instance, the practices of major clothing distribution firms are being modified to circumvent legal constraints and the employer's obligations when they employ more than a given number of employees, to engage in a system of consultation with workers’ representatives. For some years some distribution firms have started to sub-let space to brands which hire only one or two employees. The workers are then dispersed and divided by a wide variety of employment contracts and working conditions, which obviously makes it more complicated for them to organise joint action.

Numerous industrialised countries have, over recent years, tended to restrict trade union rights. Indeed, the new Australian government had only just taken up office when it put a bill before parliament seriously limiting trade union rights, in particular the right to strike. In Belgium, employers are quick to act to bring court proceedings to limit the actions of trade unions by imposing very heavy fines. For nearly twenty years now women workers in the United Kingdom have had to come to terms with very strict anti-trade union legislation which, for example, allows employers to circulate blacklists of trade unionists seeking employment.

In Central and Eastern Europe also, women trade unionists, more than others, are frequently victims of violence. In 1996, striking women workers at a paper manufacturing factory in Romania suffered police attacks during their action. In Hungary, women workers were required to undergo gynaecological examinations before being recruited by foreign companies. During the presidential elections in Belarus, the authorities decreed the suspension of trade union activities. Failure to respect this measure was then invoked to justify the arrest of ten trade union leaders in October 1996. In Serbia, the authorities severely repress any trade union activity, thereby giving enterprise managers almost unlimited powers. It is in this context that strikers, the great majority of them women, at the Jugo-Export Company, were forced to leave the premises they were occupying, under threats from the police who had entered the building.

Nor are women workers in the public sector safe from attacks. When directed at measures taken under structural adjustment programmes, their action is frequently subject to even more intense repression.

In a certain number of countries, among them Turkey and Japan, workers in the public sector - which has a large number of women - are not allowed to strike or to negotiate on questions relating to management. Nor can civil servants undertake collective bargaining.

Strikes have nonetheless led to change. One such case was the action undertaken by Zimbabwean female nurses, who, in August 1996, stopped work in protest against the government’s refusal to respect its commitments to raise salaries. Almost 135,000 workers - essentially women - were dismissed. Recruitment advertisements then appeared in South Africa and Great Britain. Following a call on President Mugabe to intervene, half the nurses were reinstated... but not the trade unionists among them. Finally, the solidarity of the women workers won the day, as they refused to start work again before the trade union leaders had also been reinstated.

Trade union freedom

The ICFTU’s 1997 annual survey on violations of trade union rights highlighted how women are among the first victims of economic globalization, and also, how, when they are trade unionists, they are increasingly exposed to acts of repression. Their massive presence in certain sectors is one reason for this phenomenon.

Setting up an organization to defend the rights of workers of both sexes is rarely plain sailing. Perceived, depending on the context and the circumstances, as a "hindrance to enterprise activity" or as a "attack on public security", if not "subversion", attempts to create trade unions are also often heavily penalized. In the informal sector in particular, which by nature lies outside the law, the risks attached to organizing a trade union are even larger.

Developing countries are not the only ones to block workers’ rights to organize trade unions. In the United States, no effective measures exist to genuinely protect the rights of striking women’s workers nor of women who wish to set up a trade union organisation. According to the last ICFTU annual survey, at least a dozen American workers who attempt to unionise are fired every year by their employers, totally illegally. It is also a known fact that more and more employers deliberately provoke strikes in order to eliminate trade unionists by using strike breakers to replace dismissed workers.

In Great Britain, moves to privatise health services have led to the introduction of hospital management companies. In order to protest against their particularly hard working conditions, women cleaners at St. George’s Hospital in Tooting attempted to organize a trade union with the help of the health service union UNISON. A trade union is now in operation, and a third of the women belong to it. However, the pioneers and those who initiated the setting up of the trade union have been victims of selective dismissals and of acts of hostility from their superiors.

Again in Great Britain, the manual workforce - 95% of which is female - at the Wandsworth schools have attempted to organize a trade union in order to protest against the understaffing, and also against the poor health and safety conditions at their place of work. These women are in fact employed by a private enterprise, Castleview, which has the reputation of being particularly hostile to trade unions. The organisation they have created is still at the embryonic stage. But the company is refusing to negotiate with its members, maintaining a very anti-trade union attitude.

Sexual harassment and bad treatment

Women workers, more than their male colleagues, are subject to sexual harassment by colleagues or superiors. The means which women can use to prevent this from one country to the next. Whilst in most industrialised countries, surveillance mechanisms have been introduced, in general things are not always so simple, and women workers do not always feel able to complain. Nonetheless, certain countries have made considerable progress in fighting this form of discrimination against women at work.

Thanks to pressure brought to bear by the trade union movement, the Philippines, Mexico and Zimbabwe are among the first countries to have clearly outlawed sexual harassment, and have adopted laws which place a very heavy responsibility on the employer, in both the public and in the private sector.

In 1994, the ICFTU’s Sixth World Women’s Conference adopted its trade union action programme on violence against women. In it the ICFTU refers in particular to the United Nations Declaration of December 1993 on Violence against Women, to the work of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on this particular topic, and to its own recommendations, which are contained in a 1986 trade union guide . It proposes an action programme to be implemented by affiliates which is directed at domestic violence, but also at violence and harassment at work. It called for the introduction of a campaign for effective legislation, better statistics, more appointments of women as judges and as legal decision-makers, training in order to achieve a better perception of women’s problems, increased funding for women’s aid, the development of national policies, the development of advisory services for the perpetrators of violence and, finally, legal protection and health services for migrant workers.

The ICFTU programme also pleads for actions to enable unions to negotiate with employers on policies concerning domestic violence. For the ICFTU, violence and sexual harassment at work need to be treated as a health and safety question, which means that trade unionists will be called on to play a key role in their elimination.

Union struggles are often successful, even if some battles prove long and arduous.

The ICFTU has launched a campaign for the introduction of a Social Clause in international trade agreements. This Clause is based on the 7 core Conventions of the ILO on: freedom of association, right to collective bargaining, abolition of forced labour, minimum age for employment, prevention of discrimination in employment and equal pay for work of equal value. While Convention 87 has been ratified by nearly two-thirds of the member States of the ILO, not all of these other conventions have been signed and/or ratified by all countries. As regards.

Women need unions and unions need women

Although not directly concerned with equality of opportunity, Convention No. 87 on freedom of association and the right to organise, is one of the most powerful tools to promote equality for women. Freedom of association and the right to organise are fundamental human rights - for both women and men - and are guarantees of democracy. The role of trade unions in organising workers, in bargaining with employers over terms and conditions of employment and in representing workers at national and governmental-level should be well established by legal and institutional frameworks. When workers organise into a union, they have an elected representative who bargains with the employer on their behalf over wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment and are in a unique position to ensure that women receive equal wages with men.

Membership in unions brings tangible benefits. Union membership in the United States has narrowed the wage gap for women by more than one-third and ensured higher pay. Unionised women earn 38 per cent more than non-unionised women workers. Working conditions in unionised jobs are of a higher standard because they are negotiated with the employer.

In many countries, unions have been in the forefront of action to promote equality at work: equal pay for work of equal value; family leave; child-care facilities; parental leave; equal opportunity policies and positive action to hire and promote more women; and procedures to eliminate sexual harassment from the workplace.

Unions are important interest and lobbying groups which can influence government policy and legislation on women’s and equality issues, and they are the largest organisations of working women and can represent their interests on the national and international level.

Equality within trade unions

However, unions have got to practise what they preach on equality or they will have no credibility with women. Women want to join organisations where their concerns are taken seriously and where they have equal opportunities to stand as candidates and to be elected to decision-making positions; to influence the issues being taken up by unions at the workplace and in society; and to become organisers and negotiators. Organisation rates of women are still lower than those of men and leadership positions - especially at the highest levels - are still male-dominated.

The ICFTU and its affiliates have adopted a whole range of positive action measures to improve women’s participation in trade union activities including conferences, congresses, collective bargaining, training ; to ensure that gender perspectives are integrated into all trade union work at every level; and to ensure that women stand as candidates and are elected into decision-making bodies.

1. SYNDICATS (FGTB) 19.12.1997
2. Quoted from ‘Worlds Apart - Women and the Global Economy’, ICFTU, Brussels, March 1996. Some figures cited in this article appeared in this publication.
3. UNDP, World Report on Human Development, 1997
4. ILO, International Labour Migration of Asian Women: Distinctive Characteristics and Policy Concerns, Geneva
5. ICFTU, Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, Brussels, 1997
6. ICFTU, Sexual Harassment at Work: a Trade Union Guide, Brussels, 1986

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Please contact: ICFTU (Equality Department) e-mail: equality@icftu.org